Who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. —1 Peter 1:5
What are true believers being kept for? Why would there be any need to be kept at all if salvation were a one-time moment—an altar call, a sinner’s prayer, a decision card? Why would we need divine keeping if salvation were already secured with no condition, no continuation, no perseverance?
The truth is this: we are being kept because salvation is not yet complete.
This verse isn’t poetic filler. It is doctrinal fact. Believers must be kept because salvation is not presently in our possession in its final form. All writers of the Second Testament confirm this, despite Christendom’s obsession with the slogans of security—“once saved, always saved,” “eternal security,” “perseverance of the saints.”
The popular line says it like this: “When people come to know Christ as their Savior, they are brought into a relationship with God that guarantees their salvation as eternally secure.”
That line, however, often treated as the measuring stick of orthodoxy, is neither scriptural nor logical.
In a true relationship—even one as sacred as marriage—someone can leave. Someone can divorce. It doesn’t matter if it’s endorsed by Yahweh or not. People do it. Christians and non-Christians alike. They walk away. They choose other loves.
Even Yahweh divorced His own people:
Then I saw that for all the causes for which backsliding Israel had committed adultery, I had put her away and given her a certificate of divorce. —Jeremiah 3:8
Israel didn’t lose Yahweh’s love—they forsook it. They lived in contradiction. They claimed Him with their lips while denying Him in their lives. They believed they were still safe, but He declared otherwise. They thought this contradictory and dissonant living was fine, that they were on their way to heaven and still in the kingdom. Yahweh informed them it doesn't work that way.
The writers of the Second Testament echo this premise and precept:
Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God. —Hebrews 3:12
I marvel that you are turning away from Him so soon. —Galatians 1:6
But he who endures to the end shall be saved. —Matthew 24:13
Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. —Hebrews 10:23
Now the just shall live by faith; But if anyone draws back, My soul has no pleasure in him. —Hebrews 10:38
This is not insecurity. This is sobriety. True security is not presumption; it is possession. What we possess is the indwelling Spirit, the very power of Yahweh, of Christ, who is able to keep us.
But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you.
Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His. —Romans 8:9
The Spirit of Christ Himself is the same Spirit of the Father, the Holy Spirit, the eternal Elohim and part of the Godhead.
Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling,
And to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy. —Jude 24
It is the Spirit of Christ in us Who is able to keep us from stumbling. Remember, able, not forceful. What stumbling is Jude speaking of? Not minor missteps. The Word tells us:
They stumble, being disobedient to the word, to which they also were appointed. —1 Peter 2:8
The Spirit keeps us from that kind of stumbling—persistent disobedience, willful rebellion, self-worship, self-absorption and satisfaction in this world, sin that becomes a lifestyle that looks good on this earth but is a rotting corpse before Him.
For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. —John 6:38
Again Jesus declares:
I can of Myself do nothing. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is righteous, because I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me. —John 5:30
He keeps us by convicting, correcting, pruning, and empowering. The keeping is not mechanical; it is relational. We must cooperate with and surrender to His keeping.
So, examine yourself: Are you following, obeying, desiring, and expressing the kingdom through your life? Are you living under the authority of the Word, verifiably, visibly, consistently? Are you resisting departure from this way while, at times, being challenged and called away from this by your own flesh and the temptations of the adversaries? Then you are being kept.
Kept by the power of God through faith… Keeping is not done by force; it is demonstrated through faith.
By faith you stand. —2 Corinthians 1:24
Who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time: Not now, not yet, but soon coming, and you are being kept for it. Cooperate with and surrender to His Spirit, the holy God of all, residing in you.
The salvation that we dream of and long for will be, in the future, revealed to us if, if, if we continue to cooperate with and surrender to His keeping. It is always a choice, but there is the reality of heaven that awaits us if the choice is Christ.
Stay kept, my friends.